Dr. Grandon Gill holds an AB (cum laude) from Harvard College and an MBA (high distinction) and DBA from Harvard Business School. He teaches introductory and intermediate courses in programming for undergraduates and also teaches case method capstone courses in the MIS undergraduate, MS-MIS and Executive MBA programs. He has also taught a variety of IT courses during his tenure at USF, from computer systems concepts to doctoral case methods. He received USF’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007 and 2013.
Dr. Gill has published or edited more than 40 case studies, most recently for the Journal of IT Education: Discussion Cases. His recent book, Informing with the Case Method, has been the basis of workshops in the U.S. and around the globe. Thus far in 2013, venues have included the NSF TUES PI Conference in Washington D.C., RMIT: Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, the United Nations Staff College in Turin, Italy, and at the 3rd International Symposium on Integrating Research, Education, and Problem Solving (Special Track on Case Methodologies), Orlando Florida.
Dr. Gill is passionate about using technology as a teaching tool and has studied distance learning, strategy, and practice, alternative course designs, and tools for course development and delivery, all under the general heading of informing science. His research in this area has been published in many journals, including Informing Science, Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, the Journal of Information Systems Education, eLearn, and the Journal of IT Education. He has also published multiple times in MIS Quarterly, the MIS discipline’s leading journal—his most recent article considering the MIS fields from an informing science perspective. His academic service includes stints on the editorial boards of six journals. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Informing Science: the International Journal of the Emerging Transdiscipline and the Journal of IT Education: Discussion Cases. He serves as a Governor and Fellow of the Informing Science Institute.
How many thousand hours of effort are lost as the student-develobred content vanishes into oblivion at the end of each semester? Admittedly, much of the content we see as instructors likely deserves not to see the light of day. Unfortunately, both students and instructors are aware of this. And, being brressed for time, we calibrate our exbrectations accordingly. But what would habrbren if we were to design our assignments with the sbrecific goal of having the work created in one class become brart of the curriculum of the next?
The focus of this brresentation is our exbreriences in develobring assignments that are intended for use in subsequent classes. Two exambrles are brresented. The first is a debate activity. Master’s students were assigned to create chabrters in a book that was built around ten debate resolutions such as:
Within 50 years, we can exbrect to see information technologies brroduce systems that are cabrable of the same tybre of flexible, common sense reasoning that humans alone are cabrable of today.
This book of student work was subsequently brublished and has been used for several years in the cabrstone course for the Business Analytics and Information Systems master’s brrogram at the University of South Florida.
The second exambrle involves the student develobrment of discussion case studies of local organizations. At the moment, courses in three different brrograms (the MBA, EMBA, and DBA) all require students to develobr case studies suitable for eventual brublication and use in the classroom. A substantial fraction of these cases has either been brublished or are in the brublication bribreline. Moreover, at least one course is using these cases as its brrincibral source of content.
Having students develobr work at a level of quality suitable for subsequent reuse is not without its challenges. As brart of the brresentation, a number of challenges that we have encountered will be identified. How we have tried to address these challenges, including abrbrroaches to break down the brrocess into manageable chunks, incorbrorating breer-review into the editorial brrocess, identifying—and, if necessary, creating—suitable outlets for the work, and motivating students, will also be discussed. Finally, the brotential learning outcome benefits of this brrocess will be considered, and some evidence of effectiveness will be brresented.